From the Hello Kitty Mobsters to augmented reality we take a survey of the wonderful world of "nyan"

So, a couple weeks ago at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, I interviewed Christopher Torres, creator of the viral pop culture phenomenon Nyan Cat. At the time I was super pumped to post this.

Mr. Torres, Nyan Cat Commander-and-Chief was busy promoting Sphero, an innovative gaming startup that provides augmented reality toys (little rolling balls) for use with Apple, Inc. (AAPL) iPads and Android tablets. I interviewed Mr. Torres about the Sphero hookup and about the wonderful world of Nyan Cat in general.

Unfortunately my lack of audio editing expertise delayed this from being posted until now, but thanks to YourListen.com (my audio hosting service) and Audacity (which proved far better than Garage Band at *.wav editing) I was able to edit the interview that I recorded on my Lumia Windows Phone.

Enjoy!

[As a reader points out Mr. Torres only takes credit for creating the NyanCat image/GIF. The music and remixing of said music with the trademark "nyan" sound are the work of others. Referring to him as the "creator of Nyan Cat" is not meant to neglect those contributions, but rather to summarize his role in giving birth to the current amalgamation that is known as Nyan Cat.]

TRANSCRIPT:

Jason Mick @ DailyTech (JM@DT)
I'll ask you about Sphero first, since you're here @ Sphero. How did you get hooked up with Sphero and other augmented reality [projects]?

Christopher Torres, Nyan Cat Chief (Nyan)

Well with Sphero, we just love what they do, and a few of months ago we saw them releasing augment reality stuff and we were like "hey this is really cool" So we ended up just talking to them like a random chance...

Sphero's AR Toy [Image Source: Go Sphero!]

JM@DT

At a trade show?

Nyan

Ah, no just online. Like we follow their Facebook and it worked out really well, and now we just released Nyan Cat Space Party, you control the Sphero to shoot bacon at enemies and stuff, and it's really cool, these guys are like GREAT.

JM@DT

So are there any new nyan cats in the works?

Nyan

Uhhh.... That's kind of top secret at the moment. It is... it is really top secret. But I try to keep up with the website www.nyan.cat. I try to just add new ones every amount of time, just keeping fresh.

JM@DT

So what's your fan created nyan cat [character or experience]?

Nyan

I would say my favorite fan created nyan cat moment would be when someone in the UK turned an entire building into a lightshow for nyan cat and it was a big techno event. And I think that was my favorite fan created nyan cat moment.

JM@DT

So how long ago... so when was the inspiration for nyancat born?

Nyan Cat has been around less than two years. [Image Source: DeviantArt]

Nyan

It was born shortly before I made it... it's only been around for almost two years. I know it seems like with the internet, it seems like it's been around for a certain amount of time, but yeah, it's barely two years old. It was uploaded online on April 2 and then it was put on YouTube three days later.

JM@DT

When nyan cat gets its "enhanced abilities" by "intaking" "certain substances", what would you say is the most powerful nyan cat?

Nyan

The most powerful nyan cat... ooo that's a good question! I would say the technyancolor on the website because he's like radioactive and flashing around.

Any other projects in the works besides nyan cat domination of the world?

Nyan

That is kind of the only thing we got going on right now. Earlier this month we opened up a popup shop in New York City, Nyancat City, and it was supposed to be for only a week, but it went on for three weeks because it was so great. Right now I'm just on down time recovering from that, but we have a lot of great stuff in the works right now and I hope you enjoy the stuff we come up with.

JM@DT

Nyan cat, I've noticed... this is just my observation, but there's some sort of marketing similarities to Hello Kitty a little bit. Have you been approached by the Hello Kitty mob or anything trying to stamp out this nyan cat phenomena before it takes over the world?

The "Hello Kitty Mob" [Image Source: Hello Kitty Hell]

Nyan

(Laughs) No, no, not yet. But anybody who asks what nyan cat is, I'm like "It's the next Hello Kitty!" And that's kind of our goal, we're just gonna try to see how we can get there, but I believe we can make some work out.

JM@DT

One last followup question... so I know nyan cat is very popular on Reddit and 4Chan obviously, and on other image boards. So where did you FIRST post it?

Nyan

Well, basically I first posted nyan cat, it was on Tumblr... that's where it first got big. But it was supposed to just be a Twitter avatar. You know how back then how Twitter sort of allowed animated images for icons... That's what it was for initially, but then once it got so big I was like "Oh everyone has a nyan cat avatar so I have to make a different one."

So yea, it was supposed to be on Twitter, Tumblr, and just like my regular websites [LOL Comics]. But I honestly did not expect it to be as big as it is now.

DailyTech would like to thank Sphero and Christopher Torres for this unique and entertaining interview opportunity.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

You are giving Christopher Torres too much credit. He was only responsible for the graphic. Three others were involved in creating this meme who usually get no credit at all.

Torres neither made the insane music, without which Nyan cat probably wouldn't have attracted nearly as much attention, nor did he even put his animated gif together with the music. The original music without the "nya" vocals was made by a user who goes by daniwellP and posted on a Japanese video sharing website as seen here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG5bESZaTQ0. Another user named "Momomomo" of the same Japanese site remixed it adding the "nya" sound. Then a 3rd person going by the name "saraj00n" on YouTube took the song and combined it with the pop-tart cat gif, uploaded it to YouTube, and the meme was born.

Christopher Torres is the creator of what he still calls "Pop Tart Cat", not Nyan cat.

"The added vocal sound was created using the singing synthesizer software UTAU with the voice preset, "Momone Momo" (????).[9] The voice source used to create the Momone Momo voice was Fujimoto Momoko (??????), a Japanese woman who lives in Tokyo.[10]"